Page 50 of The Quest for Excalibur
Nial spared him a quick, reflective glance. “Aye, I have that.” His eyes reverted to the river’s course, as he navigated between two stands of rushes.
In the bows Arthur remained leaning back, the picture of relaxation, as though the answer to his question mattered nothing to him. “Where would that be, then?” Almost a whisper this time, as though out beyond the mist eavesdroppers lurked.
Nial shrugged thin shoulders. “I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. I don’t know where it were. ’Tis only a story, now, told to children by their mamis of a night to scare ’em. We’s Christians now.”
Like I believed that. Christianity lay in only a thin veneer over Britain, and the peasants paid lip service, preferring instead to turn to the old gods in times of need. Even the nobility didn’t always seem convinced of who or what they should be propitiating.
Arthur’s gaze followed a flight of ducks as they rose over the mist. “I’m not meaning human sacrifice. I’m meaning things like swords.”
Nial chuckled. “’Tis all the same to me. And probably to them that come before us. I’d think they put ’em all in the same spot, if they thought t’was a spot the gods would favor. Swords and sacrificed people the same.”
The whispering water rippled with our going, dark and devoid of light. If I fell in, it would swallow me forever, taking me as a human sacrifice. I tore my gaze away with an effort and glanced over my shoulder at Nial.
He shook his head in apology. “I still don’t know where it were done. I’m sorry.” His sharp eyes flicked from Arthur’s face to mine, then fixed on the river ahead.
Arthur waited a while before he posed his next question. “Is there anyone on the island who might know?”
Up ahead, the monks’ wharf, its short bank shored up with solid wooden stakes and planking, materialized out of the mist. Nial shot Arthur another quick glance, then steered the boat toward it. “Ask at the village. There might be one there as knows. I do doubt as anyone in the abbey would. Too pagan for their liking.” He chuckled again as the boat’s nose touched the side, perhaps at the thought of the reaction we’d get if we tried asking Abbot Jerome about pagan sacrifices. The boat rocked again as Arthur got to his feet and leapt ashore with the rope.
I waited, still holding tight to the sides, until they had it secured fore and aft, then let Arthur hand me out, which set it rocking even more. A relief to have solid ground beneath my feet at last.
How strange that the mist seemed to swathe only the marshes, and not the island’s cultivated slopes. I glanced up. Above the treetops the familiar hump of the Tor dominated the skyline. Unbidden, my mind went to the small stone circle on the summit. The way back to my old world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nial tugged hisforelock. “I’ll sit an’ fish fer my supper while you’re about yer mission, then.” He winked at Arthur and hoicked his rod out of the bottom of the boat where it had been lying in a puddle of murky water. We left him baiting his hook with something he’d found in his pocket that I didn’t want a closer look at, but which might have explained the continuing odor of fish that had followed us across the water.
“We’ll go to the village,” Arthur said, taking my hand. “If there’s anywhere on this island where our ancestors made offerings of their weapons, then one of the older villagers might know where to find it.”
I’d gathered that much, but couldn’t help an uneasy feeling of foreboding in my gut. A large part of me shied away from returning to the primitive cluster of huts I’d seen on my first day in this world. They hadn’t been all that friendly then, and they might well not be now. In fact, at least one of them had wanted to lynch me. Best if I held my tongue about that.
“What makes you think the sword would be with other offerings?” I asked as we walked.
“I don’t particularly. But it’s a place to start.” He gestured around himself. “This island’s pretty big, and the girl in your vision wasn’t all that specific, was she? In fact, she could have meant anywhere in this general direction.” He chuckled. “Even as far as the sea and beyond.”
Was he just humoring me?
We threaded our way between the silvery trunks of a small and stunted wood, sunlight filtering through the leafy branches to dapple our path. A sow and her litter of half-grown piglets ran squealing away from us, and overhead a blackbird called a warning.
Arthur seemed familiar with where the village lay. Without hesitation, he headed north, taking a winding path through the abbey’s orchards and along the long ridge of high land that pointed south into the wetlands. Only small, unripe fruit on the trees at present, but come autumn, there’d be a fine crop for cider making.
Where the land spread out around the foot of the Tor, and the path we followed would have led us west toward the abbey, he took a well-worn track to the east that ran between oaks, chestnuts and ashes, all heavy with foliage.
“Are you sure this is a wise idea?” I asked, as the squat, thatched houses of the village appeared between the trees, and the scent of woodsmoke, pigs, and middens drifted toward us on the warm air. “They didn’t like me much when I first met them.”
He tightened his grip on my hand. “Nonsense, you’re their queen now. And yes, we do have to ask. Asking will be the best thing to do.” He smiled, and I still had that feeling of being humored. “You saw the sword in water and heard what Nial said.”
With growing reluctance, I let him lead me out of the woodland and into the center of the group of houses. Nothing much had changed. The middens might have grown larger and smellier, and the roofs perhaps a little more blackened and less waterproof, but ostensibly the village seemed much the same as I remembered from that frightening first day in the Dark Ages. A lifetime ago.
Every house opened onto the communal central area, much as the houses in the Lake Village did, only here this area spread larger as they occupied dry land. Rickety doors, hung on leather hinges, stood open wide in the summer’s heat, and outside almost every dwelling a woman sat at her loom, many of them with children playing in the dirt at their feet.
As we stepped out of the trees and into their view, hands stilled, and adults and children stared at us out of hostile, watchful faces. Thick plaits hung down the women’s backs, and their barefoot children wore only grubby shifts. Not one of them looked clean. No sign of their menfolk and that aggressive giant who’d been their headman, whose name I’d forgotten.
The women squinted at Arthur in the bright sunlight, their children edging closer to them, to hook wary fingers in their mother’s clothing.
Although Arthur had dressed with his customary lack of anything ornamental, preferring instead a dark blue tunic and leather braccae, everything about him spoke of his regal bloodline: his height, his well-dressed, well-nourished appearance, his cleanliness, and his bearing. And the thick, dragon-finialed gold torc about his neck rather gave the game away.
A good forty pairs of eyes stared, unblinking. They’d probably never seen their king before, and despite having no crown and not wearing armor or helmet, nor carrying a shield, he made a splendid sight.
